Love them, hate them or eat them.
We love pets and animals that are cute. Dogs and cats especially. Fuzzy and furry, They can help you reduce stress and fill a need. They can also trip you up and make you fall. Adorable pets are all over advertising now. Sex sells, but I think cute pets sell is the new motto.
We hate creepy, slimy pests. Some animals are harder for us to apply human like quality. Anthropomorphism is giving human quality to animals. We will kill mice, bugs and other pests in our homes.
Some animals we eat. We never see the cattle, pigs or chickens that we eat. We are mostly ignorant of the industrial meat production. It’s invisible and out of mind.
Animals and us are separate. But our relationship with animals is full of contradictions. Animals probably don’t need us. But it can be argued that we could not live without animals.